Tunisia jails tycoon Mabrouk and ex-PM Chahed on corruption charges

By Tarek Amara

TUNIS, March 3 (Reuters) – A Tunisian court on Tuesday sentenced the country’s richest businessman, Marouan Mabrouk, son-in-law of former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, to 20 years in prison, and former prime minister Youssef Chahed to six years, in corruption cases, lawyers said.

Mabrouk has been held in prison since late 2023. Chahed, who served as prime minister from 2016 to 2020, is currently abroad.

Mabrouk is part of an influential family with business interests in trade, banking, communications and car dealerships. Mabrouk also controls a major supermarket chain and owns shares in BIAT Bank, French telecoms operator Orange and a biscuit company.

He is one of Ben Ali’s few relatives who did not flee Tunisia after a revolution in 2011 that toppled Ben Ali.

Mabrouk, however, has faced criticism that he received support and protection from successive governments after 2011.

Mabrouk was charged with money laundering, stealing funds from state companies and obtaining illegal benefits from Chahed’s government, while Chahed was sentenced to six years for his cabinet’s approval for lifting the freezing of Mabrouk’s funds in European banks.

The court also sentenced six other former ministers to six years in prison on the same charges as Chahed.

President Kais Saied, who seized control of the government and dissolved parliament in 2021 in a move that the opposition described as a coup, created a committee in 2022 to collect money from business owners allegedly involved in financial corruption cases, to reduce Tunisia’s budget deficit.

Saied had said that these business owners must pay and that the state would not give up what is owed to it.

He said the state would collect no less than $5 billion. However, after several years, the reconciliation committee has not announced any amounts had been received.

(Reporting by Tarek AmaraEditing by Ros Russell, William Maclean)